David Lee King

social media | emerging trends | libraries

Archives for March 2006

How to Write Blog Post headlines

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Gee – mine’s not nearly as good as the original post’s headline: Writing Headlines That Get Results. Go take a peek at this post, though – there are some great suggestions in it about writing better headlines for your blog posts.

The ideas presented ALSO apply to library websites in general – we can all work on writing:

  • better page titles
  • better article titles
  • better subject headings
  • better link wording
  • better email subject lines
  • etc

By the way – I’ve just subscribed to the blog, too – there’s some good stuff there about online writing in general.

Finding Sounds

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The LibrarianInBlack posted about the Soundogs sound effects search engine. It seems to be pretty cool… But FindSounds is cooler.

FindSounds is a specialized search engine for sound effects and musical instrument samples. You can specify audio resolution, sample rates, file formats, mono/stereo, and file size in the search. And all the sounds found using FindSounds are free (better than Soundogs).

Chris Sherman wrote an article about it awhile back.

The Web 2.0 Awards

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The Web 2.0 Awards is a website that has “over 300 web 2.0 sites in 38 categories” – rated and ranked. There’s a winner in each category, and runner-ups are also mentioned.

It’s not always terribly accurate – for example, under the category of Bookmarking, del.icio.us isn’t mentioned (and I’d think it would be). But then, maybe the other sites listed were somehow considered “cooler?” I don’t know. Del.icio.us is mentioned in the Social Tagging category…

Still, this is a great tool to use as a summary of web 2.0 products and services, listed in categories. Go take a peek.

33 Wikis in 33 Days

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The eastwikkers blog is running a series on wikis – “33 Wikis in 33 Days.” The goal is to highligh each wiki, briefly describe what the wiki is for, why they like it, and what one can learn from it.

The focus isn’t on the software used – it’s on the collaboration taking place. It should prove interesting to see what people and groups are doing with wikis!

Law Professor Bans Laptops in Class

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From this article… a professor has banned the use of laptops in her class. The article says “Professor June Entman says her main concern is that
students are so busy keyboarding they can’t think and analyze what
she’s telling them.”

Wow. Just wow. I have a question… those students are TAKING NOTES. But using a laptop to do the note-taking.

How in the world is typing one’s notes somehow different from using pen and paper to take notes? Is there really a difference, other than laptops might be a bit more noisy?

Compared to what her students just might be doing in the “real world” (as in, using a laptop to take notes, write reports on the go, etc, etc), I’d think the professor would welcome the use of laptops.

But that’s just me.